eCommerce

Liberty Center is Greater Cincinnati’s something-for-everyone development

There are mixed-use developments, town centers, and then there are PLACES, and Liberty Center is being designed to be just that when it brings 1.2 million sq. ft. of retail, restaurant, offices, residences, a hotel and three parks — including one inside the enclosed mall — to a young and affluent area of North Cincinnati.

Liberty Center, opening Oct.

Another opening in 2014 made plenty of headlines. Azalea Regional Shopping Center, opened in August by PrimeStor Development in South Gate, California, houses the new branded concept by Forever 21: F21 red, which offers an increased depth of product at a significantly lower price point. The Azalea store, which opened in May, was the brand’s debut; three other F21 red stores have since opened in New York and Minnesota.

Azalea Regional Shopping Center has plenty to shout about on its own. The 32-acre, Los Angeles County-area project grew out of a vacant site and delivers 400,000 sq.

Chicago – Customers at malls are actively posting via social media, but leaving out information that could help mall-based retailers. According to a new study from location-based social media monitoring firm Geofeedia, 91% of mall-based social posts lack relevant hashtags and/or keywords, and 8% of posts only contain photos or videos.

Our cover story this month is about one of my favorite topics: hot retail concepts. It’s a subject that, to my mind, never goes out of style because it speaks as much to the essence of retail in today’s omnichannel age as it did in the purely physical one.

New concepts remain the lifeblood of retailing, and it’s always exciting to recognize and call attention to them. And I’m happy to report that the industry seems to be particularly rich in new formats these days.

Elmwood Park, N.J. – Traditionally, when something is printed on paper, it is considered more valuable and “real.” But for Adagio Teas, an omnichannel specialty retailer of gourmet tea, digital promotions are the most reliable.

“As an online vendor, we are sensitive to the effectiveness of promotions,” Michael Cramer, founder and CEO of Adagio Teas, said during an exclusive interview with Chain Store Age. Adagio Teas operates three stores in the Chicago area as well as a global e-commerce site.

Major shopping center openings in 2014 beg the question, “Are we back on track?”

Last year may be the first 365-day period since the Great Recession that there is enough new shopping center space to crow about.

Chain Store Age’s annual development survey — spanning 26 years — reported pretty spotty new-build efforts from 2009 to 2013, but in 2014 some significant projects opened.

Apple will open its highly anticipated new campus in April. Dubbed Apple Park, the site is located on a 175-acre site in Cupertino, Calif.

The heart of the campus is a futuristic, ring-shaped, 2.8 million-sq.-ft. headquarters building that’s clad entirely in panels of curved glass. Designed in collaboration with Foster + Partners, Apple Park is powered by 100% renewable energy. With 17 megawatts of rooftop solar, the campus will run one of the largest on-site solar energy installations in the world.

Front-end omnichannel success relies on back-end fulfillment

The front-end promise of omnichannel retail cannot be delivered without investment in back-end technology and processes that allow fulfillment of orders across multiple channels. Retailers must eliminate internal silos and obtain real-time awareness of their full inventory.

Omnichannel fulfillment is a difficult, but not impossible, task.

Gaining market share and geographic coverage are top priorities driving deals

Retail continues to rally for deals in 2015, and the sector could be on the cusp of another major year for mergers and acquisitions. Already this year, we’ve seen speculation about a number of potentially massive deals — from a possible buyout of Rite Aid by Walgreens Boots Alliance to the proposed merger between Staples and Office Depot. Looking across the industry, as part of BDO’s annual Retail Compass Survey of CFOs, we asked chief financial officers at leading U.S.

David’s Bridal gets personal with advanced digital analytics

There are few events more personal in a woman’s life than her wedding.